Pillaging
Pillaging (or Raiding) is the simple process of attacking another town in order to steal some of their resources. The Basics Building Units In order to attack, you must first have built some units. In the early game, these would be Slingers. As you advance through the Military tech tree, the units become more advanced and far superior in combat. In order to build units, you must first have a barracks building. This is available to build from the very beginning and doesn't require research. Costing only 35 wood, the Barracks is an essential early game building required for defense and offense. Once the Barracks is built, you can click on it to bring up the Units menu. You will only see the option to build Slingers, which will cost 40 wood each. As long as you have 40 wood, you can create your first unit by typing 1 into the box above the Recruit button. After this, the slinger will start to be built - in 12 minutes, the slinger will be ready. Pre-attack Preparations Getting the loot home Your soldiers won't carry spoils home for you, so in order to carry the loot you will require a cargo ship - to get these you need to build a trade port. This building is also available to build at the beginning of the game without needing research. Selecting a target At the very beginning, you will want to attack people without any defense. The easiest way to find out is to check the Highscores, choosing the Generals option (hit Sumbit), and search for the player's name. A zero (0) will indicate no units. It is also best right at the beginning to attack inactives on your own island, this is because you can use the resources to boost your own economy and they are unlikely to come back. As you progress through the game, the number of inactives which are worth attacking drops so you'll have to pick your targets a bit more carefully. It costs to earn Check whether you can afford to send your units to attack as the upkeep costs double when your units are in the field. When you are issuing the Pillage command to your Military Adviser, you'll get an estimate of the costs. Reaching 0 money will cause your military units and scientists to desert. Attack Preparations Slingers are very weak. In order to use them and successfully pillage, you're going to have to train at least 2 of them. This is because the town hall offers some defense -- while you won't see it on the combat report, it's there. The Attack In order to attack, you need to be in the island view. You can then click on the target town and a toolbar will appear to the left of the screen. The toolbar will have an option to pillage the town. Select this to activate the Pillage preparation screen. Select 2+ Slingers and then press Pillage Town. On the same island, it will take about 1 hour for the attack to reach the town, loot it and come home. "It is prefered to have more army to attack, you will face enormous financial penalties. As a result, you have to see the opponent's military score...If it is 100 or less, you can pillage people with 3 slingers, and of course, the opponent's score should be more than 300 because is it is less, loot will return as really small amount. Required to have 3 transport ships to get more than 1K+ of goods." - Says Servent of KhamulBrsrk. Again, your soldiers will need a cargo ship, even on the same island. If you only have one ship and your soldiers are pillaging, don't send your seemingly available ship off to trade. The Battle Report The attacker only sees the last round of the battle. This makes the report a little confusing. Don't worry, you are shown how many units you lose - unless you lose all of them, in which case, you will get a blank report and you lose combat. Since you are using slingers at this point, you can always expect to lose at least one. The important bit is knowing if you won and how many troops you lost. Loot The amount of loot you get is decided by the number of trade ships you have available, but more importantly by the target towns trade port. The higher the trade port the more resources can be loaded in the 20 minute window you have. * A town without a trade port can load 3 resources per minute, meaning 60 resources total. * A town with a level 1 trade port can load 10 resources per minute, meaning 200 resources total. * A town with a level 2 trade port can load 30 resources per minute, meaning 600 resources total. * A town with a level 3 trade port can load 58 resources per minute, meaning 1160 resources total. * etc This is why you may only get 60 resources per an attack. You may get less if they have a large warehouse and very few unprotected resources, but generally you can expect to get a minimum of 60 resources. Note that you always send one trade ship when you pillage -- this is to carry the troops to the destination. After you win a battle, it calculates the loot, if it's more than one trade ship (300 resources), more of your ships (if you have some available) immediately "appear" at the island and start loading the goods. Then after all of them are loaded, they sail back. You don't get more ships, and there's always enough room for the troops to be loaded also. This is another case of the teleporting trade ship. The type of resources you get is proportional to the total number of resources they have. For instance, if you pillage a town with a size 1 trade port and they have 1000 Wood and 500 Marble (a 2:1 ratio), you will pillage 133 Wood and 66 Marble (the 2:1 ratio). Advanced Techniques As you progress through the game, new units will appear. Wine and sulphur are both essential for a raider: :* Wine allows your city to grow larger and as a result support more units (once you have Wine Press) :* Sulphur allows for more advanced units such as the swordsman or phalanx, as well as being necessary for all naval war vessels. New Units Shortly after Wealth, you should have researched Professional Army (some will say Wine Press should be researched first but it's up to you). Professional Army will allow you to build Swordsmen and Phalanxes assuming that the Barracks is at a high enough level. You should then use Phalanxes for defense (and maybe attacking, if needed) and swordsmen for attacking. 1 Swordsman can usually take an undefended city (without loss), whereas with slingers you can always expect to lose 1. If a single swordsman fails to take an undefended town (seems to happen with higher level towns), a better unit such as a Phalanx is required. Blockading As trade opens up, it becomes advisable to blockade ports before attacking. There are multiple reasons for this: * Emergence of fleets - With the emergence of fleets, your units can't be sure of reaching the opponents town as the harbour may be guarded by war vessels which will turn your trade ships, carrying your troops, away. As well as this war vessels in the harbour can block your trade ships from reaching the town in order to carry the loot away. * Resource saving with trade ships - With trade now blooming, people will have trade ships of their own to carry resources with. Annoyingly these can be loaded up and sent off to another location to avoid the attack and then recalled. However if you blockade the harbour before the tradeships are sent, the trade ships can't get out of the city and the resources are trapped there as your ground troops come in to attack. Blockades work in the same way as attacking - simply choose the target town and as long as you have some war ships, you may blockade the enemies' harbour. If the enemy has a fleet of its own, then the fleet may engage your own. If this happens, you will get a sea battle - if you win you will then control your harbour and your trade ships can get through without a problem. Blockades can be broken however by a foreign fleet wishing to aid the blockaded town, or even a fleet from the town itself. If the relieving fleet is stronger than your own, it will defeat and sink some, if not all, of your ships in the process of clearing the harbour. For this reason, it is best to arrive with ground troops 5 minutes after the blockading fleet arrives. This narrows the amount of time that your fleet might be attacked by a foreign fleet whilst your troops are still in the city. Note that due to a recent change, you can't blockade inactive players if they have at least one ship in their port, and hence you can't pillage them (unless they are on your island). Also see the Common Ship Questions article. Colonies With the advance of Expansion, colonies can and will be built. These colonies mean that it is much harder to judge whether there are troops in the city than before. This is because the colony owner will appear on the high scores as a single item and his armies could be spread between both towns or just in his main. Until the advance of espionage (see below), it becomes more important to attack with overwhelming odds, just to be sure that you will break the defense of the city. Espionage With the advance of Espionage you gain the ability of Spying on your enemies. * Show you the city view of the other players town - this includes the levels of all buildings including the trade port * Find out how many resources are in the city * Find out how many units, war machines, and war ships are in the city * Track fleet movement - also shows which units are on the ships * Find out how much gold is in the treasury * Find out what the last research was * Monitor messages - allows you to see the subject, not content * Find out if the player is online Of the spies activities, only a few are necessary for raiding, the others are useful and interesting, but not need to know. Knowing the value of the barracks, shipyard, and trade port will tell you what type of units and ships you can expect to face as well as how much loot you can expect. How many units in the town will allow you to send adequate force to get it, as well as this you can take into account the defense bonus you can expect from the wall level. Finding out how many resources are in the city as well as the warehouse level will tell you how many resources are available for looting. These aren't essential to attacking merely useful, and if your spy dies whilst attempting the mission don't worry too much. It is only a game so send as many troops as you think you need, the worst that can happen is that you have to rebuild. Category:Guides